2011 lambing begins

Our first lamb of the new season was born last Thursday.

It's a great time of the year - and a great time to be living on a farm.

Thank a farmer. Please.

Today’s ‘Positive and Optimistic Sunday’. Australia’s current population’s 22+ million [1]. I guess that at most, only a few thousand are totally self-sufficient in food. So almost all of us have a lot to thank our farmers for. Each year the National Farmers’ Federation [2] publishes Farm Facts – an independently produced publication of agricultural facts and figures that provides a snapshot of the state of farming in Australia. Farm Facts 2011 [3] tells us there are 135,996 farms in Australia (of which 3,547 or 2.9% are in Tasmania), farmers manage 61% of Australia’s landmass, 94% of Australian farms actively undertake Natural Resource Management, our farming sector generates A$155B a year in production, Australian farmers produce 93% of our domestic food, and 60% of our farm produce is exported. Indeed in 2010, during the worst drought on record, our farm exports earned a record A$32.1B. And while 318,000 people are directly employed on our farms, 1.6M Australian jobs hinge on farm production. What with adversity including drought, flood, fire and locusts – not to mention expensive farm inputs, and massive price pressure from supermarkets and other commercial produce buyers – our farmers are doing it tough. As they always do. I recently read that ‘One well known Victorian farmer said that life wasn’t meant to be easy [4]. But it surely wasn’t meant to be this bloody hard either’. So if you get a chance, thank a farmer. Please. For it’s important – nay, vital – for our nation that our farmers feel positive and optimistic.

The shape of things to come?

Vis-à-vis the farm part of Farmdoc, a recurring theme in this blog is hay. In the nine years my sharefarmer Sharon and I’ve been jointly farming our adjoining properties, we’ve used square hay bales [1]. (They’re actually rectangular but called square.) This is because they’re smaller and lighter than round bales – the hay in a round bale’s roughly the same as in 15 square bales – so we can handle them manually. (Lifting round bales needs machinery – which Joel Salatin derides as ‘heavy metal’ [2] – which we don’t have and don’t want.) As neither Sharon nor I is getting younger (and stronger), we’re seeking ways to make our farming easier. So we decided we’d experiment this year. Last Saturday we bought a round bale (pictured) (for A$50) which we rolled off Sharon’s ute into one of our paddocks where we have 36 sheep and 29 goats. Instead of feeding square bale hay to them daily, the round bale’s now available to them, buffet-like, 24/7. How quickly they’ll eat it, and whether it’ll be degraded by the weather or them climbing and then excreting on it, remains to be seen. But if you don’t ask the question you won’t know the answer. This aspect of farming’s fun. It intrigues me. Stay tuned.

The billy goat and the ethical conundrum - part 2

My recent post ‘The billy goat and the ethical conundrum’ [1] snagged the interest of Farmdoc’s Blog readers, several of whom have asked me what’s happened since then. So here’s Part 2:

On 24 March, over dinner (fish and chips, FYI), Sharon and I decided to speak further with Mr Smith (still not his real name) by phone. As a day after her phone call with him, Sharon was still very upset by his verbal attack, we agreed I’d phone him. I did, in Sharon’s presence. Calmly and courteously but firmly, I reiterated to him our clear recall of the agreement, i.e. payment via one nanny kid of the Smiths’ choosing. After a long silence, Mr Smith said: ‘I’m speechless’. Then he hung up on me. The next day (25 March) Sharon received this email [2]. (She forwarded it to me on 27 March.) We decided the appropriate response would be for her to email him back, acknowledging his email and reiterating our eagerness to abide by our side of the deal as we recalled it, i.e. the Smiths to choose the best nanny kid in the mob. Sharon sent a short email along these lines over a week ago. There’s been no response from the Smiths. I intuit they won’t communicate further. Time will tell. But if anything further does happen, I’ll post it on Farmdoc’s Blog.

P.S. I’m considering sending this conundrum to the NYT Ethicist Randy Cohen [3, 4], seeking his response. Stay tuned.

The billy goat and the ethical conundrum

Conundrum. My dictionary’s definition is ‘a difficult problem’. I love this word. It’s onomatopoeic – redolent of hmmmm. Today I write of my latest ethical conundrum: My sharefarmer Sharon and I needed a billy goat to mate our nannies with last May. Would we buy or hire? Finally we agreed on an arrangement with a local couple she knew – the Smiths (not their real name) – who live 5km away. The Smiths would loan us a billy for six weeks (i.e. two goat menstrual cycles) in return for a female kid – of the Smiths’ choosing – from his progeny. There was no paperwork – Sharon and the Smiths were socially acquainted, and we all lived in the same locality. It was very cordial. Last 21 May we collected the billy – Flynn, (pictured) à la ‘in like Flynn’ – and straight away put him with 29 nannies. On 5 July we returned him. Both days we reiterated the deal with Mrs Smith. Flynn had worked well: 20 sons and 14 daughters. Next Sunday Sharon and I’ll wean these kids. So last Tuesday Sharon phoned the Smiths to fix a time for them to choose and take a nanny kid. Mr Smith retorted that the payment was one kid to them for each 10 kids born. He’d unilaterally changed the deal. He was aggressive and rude to Sharon. She was very upset. So, folks, that’s the conundrum. What should we do? Agree to the revised deal? Stick to the original deal? Compromise? What do you think? Hmmmm.

farmdoc's blog post number 534

Last Sunday, in our Hayshed Paddock, my sharefarmer Sharon and I had a leisurely confab and decided that as our paddock grass is growing causing our goats and sheep to have all but lost interest in hay, we’d stop feeding out hay forthwith. Each May when we start with the hay, it’s so much fun. The animals run for it, then they gobble and munch and crunch as if their lives depended on it. Which they do. For through the cold and dark and wet months when the grass doesn’t grow, they need hay – for warmth, roughage and some nutrition. In deep winter, feeding hay’s a drudge. But it must to be done, so done it is. Daily. Then when spring arrives and the weather’s again conducive to outdoor pursuits, hay feeding ends. Ain’t that life in a nutshell. Like when you’re young and your financial needs are greatest, you’re not at your earning peak. But when you’re older and you’re earning more money, your needs are less. Also last Sunday, Sharon sheared the pictured wether lambs (born in late 2008), then I drenched them, then we turned them out into the Home Paddock. The theory (and practice) is that without wool they’ll be colder, so they’ll eat more to keep warm, so they’ll put on weight. By month’s end they’ll be fit to kill. We may BBQ or roast one to mark the end of the hay feeding months – and the end of another turn of the annual farm cycle.